Thieves broke into the royal palace in the dead of night. Fleeing into the garden, they found a saint sitting in dhyana, utterly still, utterly absorbed. They draped a stolen necklace around his neck and disappeared.
The guards seized Shri Kshiti-Udadhi Ji. The king sent him to prison.
Very soon, the king was gripped by an unbearable headache that would not relent by any means. His ministers tried every remedy. Nothing worked. Finally, on the advice of his counselors, the king fell at the saint's feet, crying, "Save me, save me!"
Kshiti-Udadhi opened his eyes. He heard the full account of what had happened. He freed the king from pain, gave him the Shri Ram mantra, and blessed him.
Kshiti-Udadhi, whose name means "ocean of the earth," was the fourth of the four guru-bhais: Kshitiprajna, Kshitidev, Kshitidham, and Kshiti-Udadhi. Nabhadas describes him as an ocean of all noble qualities.
Connected to this entry is the account of Padapadma Ji. A guru, departing for a distant land, commanded his disciples to maintain firm devotion to Shri Ganga. Upon returning, he entered the waters and called one disciple to come to him. The disciple hesitated. How could he step on Vishnupadi Ganga? But by the grace of Shri Ram, lotus leaves appeared on the surface of the water. The disciple ran across them and reached his guru. From that day his name became Padapadma Ji, and deep shraddha was kindled in all who witnessed it.
The Name Needs No Preparation
When Kshiti-Udadhi Ji and his fellow saints were refused entry to the royal gardens and found no water for their morning bath, they faced a familiar spiritual dilemma: can one worship without having completed the prescribed purifications? Kshitidev Ji answered without hesitation. Perform Nam kirtan without bathing, he said, and then we leave this city. The instruction dismantles a subtle attachment: the idea that the Name of Hari is conditional, that it waits upon clean bodies and proper forms. The Name of Ram is not a reward for ritual compliance. It is the very source from which all purification flows. When circumstances conspire to remove every external preparation, the sincere heart remains. That is enough. Bhakti does not live in the ceremony that surrounds it. It lives in the turning of the heart toward the Lord.
Bhaktamal, tilak commentary on the group of four guru-bhais including Kshitidev Ji
The Saint Who Cannot Be Diminished
Kshiti-Udadhi Ji was found seated in deep dhyana in a royal garden at night, a stolen necklace placed around his neck by fleeing thieves. He was seized, brought before the king, and imprisoned without a hearing. The texts record nothing of distress, no protest, no injury to his inner state. The name Kshiti-Udadhi means the ocean contained within the earth: the boundless held within the grounded. A man whose awareness has touched the foundation of being is not shaken by a change of address. Prison is only a room. Injustice is only noise. Nabhadas Ji calls him sarvagunasamudra, an ocean of all noble qualities. This is not a list of virtues accumulated over time. It is a single vast depth from which virtues arise as waves. The saint's equanimity under false accusation is not patience developed through effort. It is the natural stillness of one who rests in what cannot be taken.
Bhaktamal, tika on Kshiti-Udadhi Ji by Nabhadas Ji
Grace Responds to Surrender, Not to Merit
The king who imprisoned Kshiti-Udadhi Ji without evidence was soon struck with an unbearable headache. Every physician, every astrologer, every minister failed him. When he finally went to the saint in the prison cell and cried traahi, traahi, save me, save me, the saint opened his eyes. The opening of the eyes is the whole teaching. There was no anger, no demand for apology, no lecture about the cost of arrogance. There was simply a compassionate turning toward the one in pain. Kshiti-Udadhi Ji listened to the full account, released the king from his suffering, gave him the Shri Ram mantra, and sent him away transformed. Grace in the Bhaktamal takes this shape again and again: not justice, not vindication, but the removal of suffering and the planting of the Name into a chastened heart. The mantra goes where it can take root. It goes to the king who has been broken open.
Bhaktamal, tika on Kshiti-Udadhi Ji; tilak commentary in Hindi by Priya Das
Shraddha at the Threshold of the Sacred
The disciple later known as Padapadma Ji received from his guru one instruction: maintain firm devotion to Shri Ganga Ji, Vishnupadi, she who flows from the feet of Vishnu. While other disciples bathed in the river and drank her waters, this disciple could not bring himself to place ordinary human feet upon those sacred waters. He worshipped only from the bank, offering his pranaam through the heart. This restraint was not timidity or misunderstanding. It was shraddha, a word that carries faith, reverence, and a trembling seriousness before what is greater than oneself. The Bhaktamal honors this quality. It recognizes that there is a way of being near the sacred that refuses to treat the holy as ordinary, that would rather stand at the threshold in full reverence than step across it with casual ease. This quality of trembling at the sacred is itself a form of bhakti.
Bhaktamal, tika on Padapadma Ji, entry attached to ID 131
The Guru's Call Resolves Every Conflict
When the guru waded into the Ganga and called out to Padapadma Ji from the water, the disciple stood at the bank torn between two kinds of love. His reverence for Vishnupadi Ganga had kept his feet from her surface. Now his guru's voice was calling him in. Two sacred things stood on either side of him. The resolution came not through reasoning but through grace: by the kripa of Shri Ram, lotus leaves appeared on the river's surface and the disciple ran. He did not calculate. He did not slow down to weigh the theology. He ran to his guru. From that day his name became Padapadma Ji, the one whose feet touched the lotus. The Bhaktamal records that all who witnessed this were filled with deep joy and that shraddha arose in them both for Shri Ganga Ji and for this saint. The miracle did not produce spectacle-seeking. It deepened the very quality of reverence from which it had arisen.
Bhaktamal, mool chhappay and tika on Padapadma Ji, entry attached to ID 131
Hindi text from OCR scan (Khemraj Shrikrishnadas Prakashan, CC0). May contain errors.